Date: Wed, 12 Nov 97 04:09:27 -0500 From: Garance A Drosehn <gad@mlor.its.rpi.edu> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Virtual Intel Machines? Message-ID: <9711120909.AA16549@mlor.its.rpi.edu>
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The following is probably the result of an over-active imagination, but I was wondering if the following could be done (or already has been done). In the land of IBM mainframes, there's an operating system (of sorts) called VM. This is an operating system which lets you run multiple operating systems on a single machine, at the same time. VM can allocate devices between the running systems, so that one running OS sees a given hard disk (for example), but no other operating systems can possibly get to that hard disk. What I was wondering is if something similar could be done with Intel-ish chips? I realize this wouldn't be a trivial thing to write, but it'd be mighty convenient to have in some circumstances (at least in an academic setting). Note that I'm not talking about compatability modes so that the user could run applications from a given operating system. I am really interested in running the entire operating system, without having to change it for some special environment. This is also similar to the idea of VirtualPC on the MacOS, except that I'd imagine it would be easier to do it on an Intel-based OS such as FreeBSD. For my purposes it'd be fine if it only worked on real, 32-bit operating systems, so maybe that makes the project a little simpler. No DOS, Win3.1 or Win95. If such a thing were possible, I think I could suggest a few additional features which would make it even more enticing to have. On the other hand, that might just ensure that everyone on this list hates me for promoting more work than anyone would have the time to do. So for now let me start with the basic idea before dreaming up exotic additions to it. --- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer (MIME & NeXTmail capable) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
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